Late yesterday, id Software's Graeme Devine released the Mac OS X version of Multiplayer Test 2 of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the World War II-inspired first-person shooter in development with Gray Matter Interactive and Nerve Software.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein drops players into the midst of the great conflict between the Axis and Allied powers, and throws in elements of horror and the occult for good measure. The current release is intended primarily as a public test of the game's multiplayer networking code.

Although Wolfenstein MP Test 2 contains the same map as did MP Test 1, the changes from Test 1 are far too numerous to list here. Worthy of special note, however, is this known problem:

The Pure Server option for servers is not currently functional for Map Test 2. Do not set Pure Server to "Yes" when hosting a Map Test 2 server. It will prevent any clients from joining your server.

A client trying to join a Pure Server will receive the following error:

VM_CreateOnCGame

If you get this message, try another server.

Suffice it to say that if you've got Mac OS X and want to help test this latest public build, you'll want to head on over to MacGameFiles.com and get it.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein will be published for the Mac by Activision.

From time to time we've updated the "free game" offer that comes with every subscription to the MacGames CD. Today we've updated the free game offer with two fantastic titles: Aspyr's Escape from Monkey Island and Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation.

The MacGames CD is a CD-ROM subscription service featuring the best in Macintosh game demos, shareware, updates, add-ons, trailers, cheaters and much more. Get 8 issues per year (delivered every 6 weeks) and save big bucks! For a limited time, when you subscribe to MacGames CD, you can get a full version of Aliens vs Predator, Escape from Monkey Island or Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation; all you pay is the shipping ($5 USA, $7 Canada, $12 International). Each subscription or renewal also includes free registration of the shareware game guide Game Doctor, plus great discounts from Mac game stores and publishers.

If you're already a MacGames CD Subscriber and would like a copy of Aliens vs Predator, Escape from Monkey Island, or Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, you can order these titles at the low price of $15 for AVP and EFMI and $10 for TR:TLR. This offer is only open for MacGames CD subscribers.

Today is the last day of our MouseMan Dual Optical giveaway! If you haven't already, head on over to our contest page and enter to win one of two MouseMan Dual Optical mice. Sporting two extremely accurate sensors, this mouse was designed to make your mousing experience more enjoyable. The lucky winners will be announced this Friday. For more information, read our review of Logitech's newest input device.

IMG's newest hardware review is of the Saitek P750 Digital Game Pad. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

The Saitek P750 gamepad, while not at the high-end of the Saitek gamepad line, nevertheless has a large number of controls to play with. Regardless of what feature you need to play a particular game, this gamepad is likely to have it. In addition to the 4 shoulder buttons, there are 8 buttons on the face of the gamepad, plus a mini-joystick, a directional pad (basically an 8-way hat switch that can be pressed up, down, left, right, and along the four diagonals), plus a throttle wheel on the bottom edge. The joystick can be locked to only move horizontally or vertically; a nice touch.

Late yesterday IMG brought you news of the release of Return to Castle Wolfenstein Multiplayer Test 2. Now some users are reporting "corrupt pak file" errors due to problems in the MP Test 2 installer.

It appears that the pak files are not actually corrupted at all, and that the simplest workaround is to trash your old Wolf MP directory before installing Test 2. According to a belated .plan update by programmer Graeme Devine:

I've not gone through and fixed all the niggles I want to get done, but hey it's there....

issues:

* You need to nuke the old test before installing and running this one.

* SMP doesn't currently work and is disabled by default. Don't turn it on.

In an earlier story today, we noted that Apple has a new article up called Kids & Learning in their Games section. While the piece features a number of well-known titles like Otto Matic and Captain Bumper, it also touches on games based upon the just-released hit movie Monsters, Inc. from Steve Jobs's other company, Pixar, and from Disney.

A number of these licenced games will be Mac-compatible, thanks to the Pixar connection. Here's a clip from the article:

While your kids are having fun, they are also developing important problem-solving skills and learning to strategize; though some are indeed just about having fun.

Disney’s Monster Wreck Room Arcade excels in this category. The series of three mini-games offer a fun and sometimes twisted take on classic arcade gaming. Monster’s Tag sends your child to collect toys and other items within a city; 8 Ball Chaos lets kids join a wild game of pool with Sully; and Bowling for Screams invites children to knock over a few pins with Mike, monster-style!

A little digging at the Disney Interactive store brings up some details on these titles. It seems that at least Monsters, Inc. Wreck Room Arcade Games and Monsters, Inc. Scream Team Training will be Mac-compatible.

The Wreck Room Arcade Games are actually a collection of three separate games priced under $10: Bowling for Screams, Monster Tag, and Eight Ball Chaos. Disney also tout the ability to "collect all three to unlock a secret game."

The other title, Scream Team Training, is a s$30 title that promises to give you a glimpse of the monster's working day. Here's part of the game'sdescription:

So what do monsters do all day? Well, you'll soon find out, as you become the newest employee at Monsters, Inc. You'll begin your journey where all new hires do -- with Roz, in the Orientation Room. But don't forget to punch in your personalized time card. In Orientation, you'll learn that before you can become a Class A Scarer, you'll have to work your way through the organization.

The above titles will all need at least a G3 to play and are Mac OS X compatible. Targeted at kids 4-8, they're probably not for the "hardcore" Mac gamer, but parents are sure to find them great stocking stuffers.

Check out Disney Interactive's (Flash-heavy) page for much more information on all of the games and even some online demos.

MacFixIt reports that, according to Mac OS X gamer Joseph Prisco, Aspyr tech support are finding that the multiprocessor code in their recently released Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force Expansion Pack can cause kernel panics on dual-processor Macs under OS X, and they describe how to disable the problematic multiprocessor support:

I was having frequent kernel panics and crashes when I tried playing this game under Mac OS X on my 450 DP system. I was told by Aspyr tech support that "We are finding that the multiprocessor code seems to be causing some problems, including the symptom you mention about the Escape key causing a crash. To correct it for now, disable the code as follows: Open the 'efconfig.cfg' file in a text editor, locate the line starting with 'seta r_smp,' and change the value at the end of this line from 1 to 0 (zero). That should take care of it for now. The programmer is investigating, and hopes to have a fix soon."

In the IMG Forum this morning, MacSoft's Nate Birkholz posted answers to the questions that a number of Mac Myth fans have been asking: What's the development status of Myth III for the Mac, and to what extent will it benefit from the testing being done by owners of the Windows version?

Here's the post in full:

Just so people are up to date, the A-Level bug list for the Mac version is as follows:

1) Random crashes under OS X when using an nVidia card. Traced to GeForce drivers for OS X.

Mumbo Jumbo has been working hard on getting these issues resolved. While they are working on these, they are fixing the Mac-specific B-level bugs and folding in fixes and tweaks reported from the PC version.

And in a related forum post at Myth Village yesterday, MumboJumbo's Mike Donges is quoted as saying:

Just to clarify, the first PC patch may not be version 1.1. We will probably version the full point releases only if they require cross platform network compatibility. For example, the PC patch and the Mac GM may both be 1.05. Or, the Mac GM may be 1.06 and the PC patch may be 1.05.

The good folks at Apple have been busy recently with the ever-popular Apple games page. In addition to adding some new design features to call out recent changes to the page, Apple has posted an article featuring MacSoft's Fly! II as well as a feature entitled "Kids & Learning."

If you're into flying on your computer, you'll want to check out Apple's take on Fly! II. Here's a snippet from the article:

Actually, we should let you in on a technicality: Fly! II isn’t really a game. It’s more of an open-ended experience that allows you to decide how long you will play. There’s no way to win or lose, so load it on your PowerBook and take it with you on the road for some flights of fancy when business trips get boring.

“I’m not a pilot,” says MacSoft product manager Al Schilling, “but I have had the occasional opportunity to take the yoke while in a small plane. There’s something about it that just gives you a very cool feeling, and Fly! II does an amazing job of capturing that feeling.”

Kids & Learning highlights the best in fun and edutainment games for kids available on Mac OS X. In addition to covering educational titles, the article also includes entertainment titles that most kids can play, such as Captain Bumber and Otto Matic.

And finally, the Apple games page site now includes a new graphic tile called "Theater Presentations", which feature upcoming game presentations in Apple stores. The firstpresentations/demonstrations are both of games from Aspyr: The Sims and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Be sure to check the schedule as new dates and locations will be added weekly.

If you play computer games, you've heard of id Software's seminal first-person shooters, and if you're a regular reader of IMG, you know that every one of them has come to the Mac.

You probably also know that each of id's shooters, from Wolfenstein 3D and Doom to Quake III Arena, has spawned its own universe of third-party modifications (or "mods"). This phenomenon has been responsible in no small way for the continuing popularity of the entire Quake series, whose games were all designed with such customization in mind.

While Quake and Quake III both offer mod authors a cross-platform Quake Virtual Machine (QVM) in the game engine, insuring that any mod developed for the QVM will run on any platform, Quake II does not, forcing mod authors to compile and test a platform-specific shared library for each operating system they wish to support.

Unsurprisingly, most Quake II mod authors have been hobbyists who don't have the resources or know-how to support multiple platforms and thus release their mods only for Windows.

In the Mac world, such lack of support is sometimes called a "third-party opportunity," and in 1999 and 2000, it was Gerard Ryan's Railgun Project that rose to the challenge:

This is what the Railgun Project is all about; we want to use the source code of MacQuake II (provided courtesy of Logicware and id Software) to recompile mods so that they work on the Macintosh.

The Railgun Project went on during its life to convert a large number of popular Quake II mods to the Mac, including, among others:

Action Quake

Catch the Chicken

Eraser Bot

Famkebot

Freeze Tag

HeadHunters

Holy Wars

License to Kill Bot

Jailbreak

Loki's Minions CTF

Night Hunters

NIQ

Superheroes

Terror Quake

Weapons Factory

Alas, when the web site hosting Railgun disappeared some time ago, the Mac gaming community's sole source of Quake II mods went with it. After a long absence from the Internet, however, the Railgun Project has found a new home over the past few months with our friends at MacGamer.

While the Project is no longer active, the preservation of its work is an important contribution to the Mac gaming community, and not only for its historical value. (Quake II is consistently one of the most popular shooters on GameRanger, the Macintosh multiplayer online gaming service.)

Check out the Railgun Project at the link below to bring new dimensions to your Quake II gaming experience.

Volition has several open positions on current and upcoming projects. All positions are full-time, salaried with full benefits including THQ stock options. Residence in the Champaign, IL area is required. Outstanding international candidates with a college degree will be considered.

Current openings listed are Character Animator, Concept Artist, and Level Designer.

Volition have gained respect within the Mac gaming community for their games Summoner and Red Faction. If you think these jobs sound like interesting opportunities, head over to Volition's Job Board to learn more for yourself.